


Friendship and Happy Endings

by gloatingraccoon



Series: Paid In Full [5]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe, Beer, Caliginous Romance | Kismesis, Friendship, Gen, Homesickness, M/M, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Post-Sburb/Sgrub, Three dorks and a night out
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-24
Updated: 2013-02-24
Packaged: 2017-12-03 12:00:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/698022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gloatingraccoon/pseuds/gloatingraccoon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You are Eridan Ampora and you think another beer might be pushing your limit a little, but you can’t really bring yourself to care. Your kismesis is sitting on your left, your lifelong palecrush is in front of you,  and the feeling that’s warming your chest tonight feels like the closest thing to home you’ve had in a while.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Friendship and Happy Endings

**> Eridan: accelerate.**

You have to admit: salamanders can make a decent beer.

Sure, the little guys look funny. They blow bubbles when they talk. They blow bubbles in their drink. They blow bubbles while cleaning the tables (which doesn’t help with the aforementioned chore). They kinda blow bubbles as a general rule. But they’ve been kind to set you three up on one of the few tables your size available in the pub, the musical backdrop doesn’t completely suck, and the beer is good. A dark amber colour, strong and spicy, with a sweet and sour aftertaste. You’re content with sipping it quietly and enjoy the taste, while Sollux of course being the uncultured oinkbeast he is just chugs down the stuff like there’s no tomorrow. You have no idea what his skinny ass body does with it, given he doesn’t seem affected at all by the alcohol. Karkat instead, sitting across the table from you, is a sort of middle ground between your extremes, long gulps between long pauses, and he seems to be getting more quiet and meditative. How much of this is just a weird mood and how much of this is alcohol, you have no idea.

What you do know, though, is that you’re actually having fun for once, and you’re not sure when it last happened. You have your kismesis on your left, your lifelong palecrush in front of you - two of the most important people you have in your life, and they’re actually having fun and wanting to spend time with you, which not so much time ago you wouldn’t have thought possible. Sollux keeps teasing you, you keep falling for it, although it’s more friendly than black so as not to wall Karkat out, and Karkat keeps telling you two to either get a room or to stop being an embarrassment to your species, but he’s doing that thing where the corners of his mouth curl up as if he were almost laughing but not really and you don’t think he’s serious (you also don’t think he really got that you and Sollux are black and you’re perfectly fine with that). Then Sollux teases Karkat for being so easy to fluster, Karkat snaps back and you get a little jealous. You’re not sure of whom and what exactly. Maybe just of the fact that they’ve been friends for all their life, the best terrible friends that ever were, beyond quadrants and definitions, and how can you compare to that? You’re not really jealous, you’re flat out envious.

Now if only Feferi too were here, you would finally feel complete.

That thought makes you cringe. Feferi is home with Aradia, probably watching one of those terrible splatter movies that make her laugh so much (and that you’re much less comfortable with than what you’d like to admit). Feferi is hardly thinking of you the way you keep thinking of her. And the keyword is thinking, because it’s not like you talk to her. You still have a hard time even being in the same room, despite her efforts to leave the past behind.

Sometimes you wish you could just forget about the game, but you can’t. You don’t think you ever could: the game is a part of who you are now, and not simply because of the scar on your abdomen. That thought makes you feel even worse, so you decide it’s time to stop it with the introspection and dive back into your beer and the fried potato sticks at the center of the table. French fries, the salamanders call them. It’s a human thing, apparently.

“What do you think it would be like now,” you say, dipping a fry into the pale creamy sauce they came with, “if we never played that stupid game at all?”

“Are you serious?” Karkat arches an eyebrow at you, licking some salt off his fingers (the same fingers he next picks on another fry with, you notice). You shrug and nod. “We’d be creamed by meteors. Not very exciting.”

“That’s obvious.” You frown, hand waving that away. “I mean, what if the game didn’t even exist at all? What if we were still home, growin’ up normally?”

“I like that adverb.” Sollux smirks. “Normally. As if.”

“Oh c’mon Sol, you know what I mean.” You roll your eyes.

“Well, for starters, we’d have passed eight sweeps,” Karkat scratches his chin, “not yet ready to be shipped off planet to join the fleet, but as ready as ever for the culling drones. So I’d be probably dead all the same.”

You swallow. This is not what you were expecting, and the calm and indifference with which he says it actually hurts you.

“I’d probably be chopped up into pieces to power some starship, so yeah, more or less the same,” Sollux says next with a shrug, and this time you actually clench your fist on your mug.

“That’s horrible to say, and no you wouldn’t,” you say, barely noticing the surprise on your friends’ faces. “Fef would find a way to keep you safe, the both of you, and I would help her. It wouldn’t have to end like that.”

Sollux sighs and looks away.

“Until the Condesce decided to pay a visit to her heiress, that is.”

You have to close your eyes for a moment at the thought. Yes, the Condesce would come back. Yes, you could fight her. But win? With Gl’bgolyb as your only possible -double edged- weapon? On a planet full of lusi and kids? Hardly.

“Eridan.”

You raise your head to meet Karkat’s stare, big, round red eyes that seem to shine on the neutral grey of his skin. It’s not Aradia’s dark, rich maroon, it’s an unmistakable, piercing, bright red. The colour that back on Alternia would have gotten him culled instantly. Those same eyes, circled in ever present bags, are looking right at you. Karkat never really laughs, but you’re not sure you’ve ever seen him so serious and so honest, so exposed at the same time. You’re surprised, but when he reaches across the table to touch your hand, you draw a breath you hadn’t realized you were holding and every fiber in your body seems to relax. His hand is smaller than yours, with stubby, bitten fingers, and his skin is incredibly warm, much warmer than Sollux’s.

Damn you are pale for this boy, you can’t deny it. You wonder if he even knows.

“Look… we all miss home,” he says, still looking at you intently. “We all have left something there, but… really, what did you want to hear? That I’d be a threshecutioner, he a superhacker, you an admiral and Feferi the new empress, that it’d be all fun and games and everybody wins? When did anything ever end like that back there? We’ll never know how it’d be like if we never played. But we know one thing for sure: we wouldn’t be the same people we are now, and we certainly wouldn’t be here. Hell, maybe we wouldn’t even be friends to begin with.”

You hang your head and nod.

“You know what’s the worst of it? Thinkin’ that fucked up stupid game might even be the best thin’ that ever happened to us.”

“Yeah, and that tells you something, right?” Sollux snickers.

Karkat snorts, which is the closest he can manage to a laugh, and you smirk.

“I’m glad we’re all here, guys,” you say, taking a sip off your mug, and Sollux gives you a punch on the shoulder, a pretty weak and friendly one, but he catches you off guard and his knuckles are bony enough to sting. “Ow, Sol! The fuck was that for?”

“That was for you turning this night out into an emotional sappy mess! Shit, you’re embarrassing everybody,” he says with a smirk, then he takes a long gulp to empty his mug. Holy shit. How is he not wobbling already?

“Yeah, dude, if we’re going to end this in tears and sweaty bro hugs, let’s wait at least to the next round,” Karkat says, then he waves to the bartender, pointing to his near-empty mug. “Hey! Can we have another three?”

You think another beer might be pushing your limit a little, but you can’t really bring yourself to care. You’re with Sollux and Karkat, and the feeling that’s warming your chest tonight feels like the closest thing to home you’ve had in a while. Three full mugs are soon brought to your table by a skinny little salamander waiter that you have no idea why is not collapsing under the sheer weight.

“This calls for a toast.” Karkat lifts his mug, and you and Sollux do the same. “This one is to friendship, and happy endings.”

Three mugs clink together, and the night goes on.


End file.
